For years I’ve seen friends celebrate Manny Pacquiao on social media as a ‘hero’ of ‘Pinoy Pride’. They cheer his every victory and lament his every loss on the ring in ‘solidarity’ with the nation he has been thrust into symbolising.
That was Pacquiao, the boxing champ. What about Pacquiao the congressman?
That question evidently flies over the heads of most Filipinos. On the mere basis of Pacquiao being a boxing champ, Filipino voters gave him a landslide mandate to represent them in the Philippines’ House of Representatives back in 2010. He seems to be set to enjoy the same mandate in his run for the Senate this year. In short, Filipinos had long deemed Pacquiao fit to be a legislator because he is a great boxer. That’s just the way the majority of Filipinos think. And in a democracy, we’ve always been told, majority rules.
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Thus, Pacquiao’s views very likely reflect the hushed sentiment of most inarticulate Filipinos who routinely apply to democratic exercises thinking faculties that were severely stunted by the Philippines’ decrepit public education system. But we need to clearly compartmentalise our outrage. The outrage is not really in the views or beliefs he espouses. He represents a legitimate sector of Philippine society — one that is conservative and religious and more closely represents the collective character of the nation than the far noisier clique of hipster Netizens that, today, are mounting their usual slacktivist campaign against the champ on Twitter and Facebook.
Funny enough, the same people who wax lovely poetic about ‘Pinoy Pride’ everytime Pacquiao emerges victorious in Las Vegas are the same people who changed their profile photos into gaydom’s rainbow colours in solidarity with same-sex-marriage campaigners in America in mid-2015 and swooned over Olympic triathlete Bruce Jenner’s coming out as a lady later in that same year. See, that is the trouble with applying a vacuous mind to stuff we see on the Internet and being pa-in with the latest activist fashion statement propagating all over social media. We end up looking like chumps when the people we worship fail to remain consistent with their respective personal brands.
The fact remains that Pacquiao is a member of Congress and is a candidate for a Senate seat. So, really, the bigger lesson to be learned out of this is that Pacquiao is completely out of his element in Philippine politics — specially in the legislature where thinking and communicating effectively and articulately is actually required (on the presumption that people actually understand what congressmen and senators are supposed to be doing in Congress). It is Pacquiao’s ineptness as a communicator (regardless of what position he takes on same sex marriage) that is the real issue we must reflect upon now that he is at the sunset of his boxing career and at the dawn of his political carreer.
If he made Filipinos “proud to be Pinoy” he will make Filipinos ashamed to be Pinoy as a government official. And that is where the real outrage in his continued popularity with Filipino voters lies.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Exactly. His recent remarks (and apology) has not made any difference to my NOT voting for him. I don’t really mind that while Filipinos inconsistently laud the Pacman while ‘donning’ rainbow profile slacktivist pics in awe of Caitlyn Jenner and just about any other hyped sports star or celebrity comes out of the closet; that’s okay, people hold incoherent ideas together all the time, but we try our best to be consistent. What bothers me also is that we may fail to see that pinoy pride and gay/LGBT pride are more or less a similar form of groupthink and thinking in group rights (entitlements, to be more precise). Both somehow confer a sense of pride or victimhood for just belonging to certain privileged group, that’s no different from racism and the implications to social justice are worrisome. The worst is still, of course, the gist in your article, the bandwagon rides on both.
Manny Pacquiao has been hit on his vulnerable part of his “body”, by this same sex controversy. It is worse than when the Mexican boxer,Marquez, knocked him out.
He underestimated the strength of the LGTBQ community. They are a formidable force in the Philippines.
“They are a formidable force in the Philippines.”
Not exactly. What actually hurt him was the international backlash since he is a known international figure. The LGBT community here is no different from the rest of the population: A joke.
Nike of course doesn’t want to lose LGBT customers.
I believe this is already the second time they pulled out on Pacquiao. Where are their principles?
I believe this is already the second time they pulled out on Pacquiao. The first time was when he first expressed his views on same sex marriage then they came back together again somehow. Where are their principled convictions? Or is everything simply all about the monetary conviniences?
“Pinoy Pride” thrives on individual–not country–accomplishment to end graft and corruption, and is truly representative of the Failipino people.
Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest–that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.